June 10, 2020
Symposium 2020 Webinar Series: Highlights, Videos and Presentations
Webinar Series Highlights
Building a Mentoring Movement in Canada
On March 25th, we hosted our first webinar for 203 registrants, Building a Mentoring Movement in Canada. This allowed the CMP team to introduce themselves to you and provide a full high-level overview of our workplan and our collective impact strategy. The audience shared a desire to collaborate, broad support for the CMP initiative, and a need for tools, resources, and training. Start here first.
Virtual Mentoring
On April 8th we did a deep-dive into Virtual Mentoring. We had 310 registrants join us to provide feedback into experiences, thoughts, hopes, and fears about alternative forms of mentoring. We were able to highlight research and expert testimony from a star cast of experts including:
- Catherine Légaré, Founding President, Academos
- Kate Schrauth, Executive Director, icouldbe.org
- Arundhuti Gupta, Founder and CEO, Mentor Together
- Michelle Kaufman, Associate Professor, Bloomberg School of Public Health, John Hopkins University
- Kevin O’Neill, Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University
This conversation generated a series of working groups engaging on average 40 different small, medium, and large service providers that are exploring adapting a safe, secure, Canadian hosted, mentoring platform to enhance e-mentoring. Your feedback assisted in the development of our e-mentoring Key Topic Overview (now available for download).
State of Mentoring Research Project
On April 22nd, Growing the Evidence base for Quality Mentoring welcomed 125 registrants for an overview into our ongoing research projects related to youth, service providers, and mentors. We were able to hear from you about your research priorities and share with you the work already being undertaken by linking academics and post-secondaries via the Canadian Centre for Mentoring Research. Panelists included:
- Dr. Christina Hackett, Social Research and Demonstration Corporation (SRDC)
- Ashley Bach, Youth in Care Canada
- Mike Garringer, Director of Research and Evaluation, MENTOR (USA)
- Dr. Christina Rinaldi, University of Alberta
Designing a National Collaborative
On May 6th we welcomed 75 registrants for an interactive conversation about Designing a National Collaborative to lead the mentoring movement in Canada. Guided by the wisdom of Sylvia Cheuy from the Tamarack institute, we explored population-level outcome goals, our theory of change, and explored what could governance look like in the design of our leadership table.
Growing the number of mentors across Canada
On May 20th we hosted our final webinar in the symposium series, Growing the number of mentors across Canada for 123 registrants. We examined best practices in mentor recruitment and retention with a presentation from Daniel Horgan, CEO of CoLabL. Participants then received a preview from Dr. Christina Hackett (SRDC) into the third installment of our State of Mentoring research series, a market research study to better understand the hopes, fears, barriers, and capacity of Canadian adults to step up as new mentors.
Looking Forward
In these continued times of physical distancing, the importance of supporting relationships for our young people remains critical. For stretched and challenged service providers, the opportunities through a Canadian collective impact strategy are numerous. Your partnership and engagement in this important work is essential. Very soon, we will launch our next major initiatives such as a virtual mentoring platform, online training, research-informed tools and resources, and a cross-Canada mentor recruitment website. To learn more, please contact the respective members of our team.